1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of real-time communications and more particularly to the management of partner lists in a real-time communications system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Real time communications systems provide a substantial enhancement over more traditional, asynchronous communications systems. Electronic mail delivery systems, the prototypical asynchronous communications systems, in its time represented a giant leap forward in respect to global interpersonal communications. Prior to electronic mail, individuals primarily communicated via telephone, facsimile and post. With electronic mail, however, individuals expect near instant delivery of text, and even imagery, audio and video, without incurring the delay typical of the postal system, or the expense associated with telephony and fax technologies.
Despite the ubiquity of electronic mail, asynchronous communications systems lack several elements common in the realm of real time communications systems. In particular, the seemingly instant delivery of a message cannot be experienced in the world of electronic mail. In an impatient society, even the minor latencies associated with electronic mail often cannot be tolerated. More importantly, often the feel and nature of a “conversation” as it is known to human beings only can be approximated through real time communications where the participants to a conversation have little time to assess a response to any portion of a message, much as is the case in a live, face-to-face conversation. Hence, the use of real time communications systems, like instant chat, instant messaging, text messaging, audio messaging, video messaging and picture sharing have begun to penetrate the communications marketplace.
Partner lists, also known as “buddy lists” have become an integral part of the real-time communications client. Typically, partner lists include a set of partners with whom one frequently communicates using real-time communications. When one activates a name in the partner list through the real-time communications system, a messaging session can be established with the user associated with the activated name. To facilitate the organization of a partner list with many listed partners, groupings of partners can be established so as to create a hierarchy of partners in the partner list. Of course, nothing prevents a name from appearing within multiple groups in the same partner list. Hence, managing the partner list can become a more substantial exercise as the number of partners and groups grows.
The names in a partner list are not live. Specifically, the presence of a name in a partner list is not dependent on the validity of the user associated with the name. To that end, even though a user associated with a name in a partner list can be removed from the real-time communications system, the name will remain in the partner list until the owner of the partner list discovers the broken link and removes the name from the partner list. Likewise, when a user associated with a name no longer can be considered a frequent messaging partner, it remains incumbent upon the owner of the partner list to prune the list to include only names associated with relevant messaging partners.
To address the challenge of maintaining a partner list, several programmatic tools have been suggested. For example, a buddy list management tool is described in United States Patent Publication US 2003/0065721 by Roskind for PASSIVE PERSONALIZATION OF BUDDY LISTS published on Apr. 3, 2003 based upon a filing date of Apr. 30, 2002 claiming priority to the provisional patent application having Ser. No. 60/325,084 filed on Sep. 28, 2001.
In the Roskind publication, the names in a buddy list can be managed according to the frequency of contact between the owner of the buddy list and the user associated with the name. Notwithstanding, the management of the buddy list in Roskind remains limited to knowledge produced for each individual buddy list in the instant messaging system. System-wide knowledge is wholly ignored and therefore, Roskind fails to capitalize on the efficiencies afforded by such knowledge.